What is Sociology? Why Study Sociology?

Sociology is the scientific study of human social behavior. Sociology deals with observing social life and the basic regularities that deal with it. Sociology, however, does not only deal with biological and psychological regularities, it goes beyond the surface and digs deeper to find the reasoning behind individual behavior. Many things affect human behavior such as friends and family, race, age, and gender, or even richness or poorness. A sociologist examines the individual and the possible affects that society may have on that person. A person lives in society, but at the same time there is a possibility for him to be shaped by the things that go on in the society. All that being said, the primary reason for a sociologist to want to study sociology would be to become aware of the reasoning behind social reality and the things that occur.
A good example of sociological thinking is not judging the people who make up a group as a whole which is best seen in a protest. The people who protested for the Vietnam War soldiers to return home may have seemed very harsh and straight forward. But, outside of the protesting, perhaps one of the members had lost a few family members in the war. So they may have simply been protesting to protect themselves from yet another heartache. They are portrayed and assumed to mean because they are protesting, but they when you dig deeper there may be different reasoning's to their behavior.